Re: Date and DateTime columns

Personally i would stick with the first method, its the more standard and the way everyone knows about.

Or you can have your date field and two extra fields with your xxx_dt and xxx_ts and populate them with a database trigger. Then your users can have a choice in what to use.

M

Jim Poe <jpoe_at_fulcrumit.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.16a5488daf42a8ff989680_at_news.fulcrumit.com>...
> Hi,
>
> Using Oracle 8, Delphi 5, Midas
>
> This is a design question. We have approximately 65 date fields. A
> little less than half (30) of them are required to be timestamps. The
> rest only need to be concerned with the date portion.
>
> We are having an internal debate on how to treat these fields.
>
> One faction wants to treat all the date columns the same and populate
> them with the date and current time, a timestamp. This would mean that
> all date columns would be handled consistently. It would require that
> any date only comparisons and selects would need to truncate the time.
> This would need to be done in our sql code, our Delphi application code,
> and any tools that the end user would use.
>
> The other faction wants to specifically class the two date types. All
> date only fields would have a naming convention of XXX_DT. They would
> be populated with the date and 00:00:00 time. In code we would always
> use
> MyDate := Date;
> The timestamp fields would have a naming convention of XXX_TS. They
> would be populated with a full date/time timestamp.
> MyDate := Now;
> When manipulating the dates, the developer and end user would know when
> they have to truncate time by the column name being in the format
> XXX_TS. Any XXX_DT columns could use the raw value for comparisons and
> selects.
>
> Are there any other issues we are not aware of? How do others handle
> this situation?
>
> Thanks
Received on Wed Jan 09 2002 - 02:57:18 CST